Why The Death Of Star Trek 4 Is So Devastating
After Star Trek had lain dormant as a franchise for years, J.J. Abrams brought it back into the mainstream with a reboot that casual fans and hardcore Trekkers alike enjoyed. But it was followed by two sequels that met with very mixed reception, and between fan criticism and diminishing box offices, we never got a fourth film. Now, it looks increasingly like Star Trek 4 isn’t going to happen, and you better hold onto your Tribbles because we’re going to explain why that’s one of the worst things that could happen to this Paramount franchise.
We’d love a Star Trek 4 to continue showing how these characters and more have continued to evolve.
First, these rebooted films gave us one of the best Star Trek casts: Chris Pine brings both playfulness and pathos to Kirk, and Zachary Quinto helped us see how much fire is burning so intensely behind Spock’s logical spell. Karl Urban rounds out the last of the core character trio from The Original Series, and his Dr. McCoy instantly makes the grouchiness of his country Doctor both recognizable and unique.
We’d love a Star Trek 4 to continue showing how these characters and more have continued to evolve. Star Trek Beyond, for example, gave us a more meditative and reflective Captain Kirk whose trademark recklessness had been tempered by the sobering knowledge he is now older than his father ever was.
Spock, meanwhile, had to deal with the metaphysical weirdness of his older, dimensionally-displaced self (Leonard Nimoy’s Spock) dying, which meant that a vital part of him had been lost forever.
We came frighteningly close to having Quentin Tarantino direct an R-rated Trek sequel (a first for the franchise) that would have been based on The Original Series episode “A Piece of the Action,” better known as the episode with the planet full of gangsters.
In Star Trek 4, we could continue to develop these characters while even providing something fans would set their phasers on kill for: more connections to Star Trek: Enterprise.
That show occurred before the event that created the splinter Kelvin timeline, and its fans let out a collective cheer when Star Trek Beyond mentioned MACO and even had our characters saving the day in the USS Franklin which, like Captain Archer’s Enterprise, predates the formation of the Federation.
In short, if you’re a Trek fan who wants more connections to Enterprise besides a joke about beaming Archer’s dog into nothingness, you should be rooting for a sequel.
There are also some very practical reasons that Paramount itself should push for a Star Trek 4, and it’s because these mainstream films without much continuity to weigh them down are the best way to recruit new fans into the fandom. It’s an open secret that the powers that be made a command decision to use the more popular Strange New Worlds rather than Discovery as a way of luring subscribers to Paramount+.
But how many more fans do they stand to gain if they release a killer film outside of that streaming paywall, especially if the film garners the kind of buzz that the 2009 reboot did?
Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek
Finally, we’d like to see a Star Trek 4 because there is the potential for Paramount to take the franchise (you guessed it) where no Star Trek film has gone before. For example, we came frighteningly close to having Quentin Tarantino direct an R-rated Trek sequel (a first for the franchise) that would have been based on The Original Series episode “A Piece of the Action,” better known as the episode with the planet full of gangsters.
These are the kinds of big swings and bold ideas that keep the franchise interesting, and the very possibility of talented directors like Tarantino taking it on means that we need to keep dreams of Star Trek 4 alive. But while Spock would remind us that “there are always possibilities,” it’s looking increasingly unlikely that we’ll ever get a Star Trek 4, especially one with Tarantino directing (he officially backed out in 2019).
At this rate, it’s looking like fans will never get treated to a scene where the cantankerous director explains what they call Plomeek with cheese on Vulcan, and if you need us, we’ll be letting out a Klingon yell at the death of this honorable would-be sequel.
